Natural philosophy encompassed all natural phenomena of the physical world. It sought to discover the physical causes of all natural effects and was little concerned with mathematics. By contrast, the exact mathematical sciences were narrowly confined to various computations that did not involve physical causes, functioning totally independently of natural philosophy. Although this began slowly to change in the late Middle Ages, a much more thoroughgoing union of natural philosophy and mathematics occurred in the seventeenth century and thereby made the Scientific Revolution possible. The title of Isaac Newton's great work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, perfectly reflects the new relationship. Natural philosophy became the 'Great Mother of the Sciences', which by the nineteenth century had nourished the manifold chemical, physical, and biological sciences to maturity, thus enabling them to leave the 'Great Mother' and emerge as the multiplicity of independent scien
The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870–1945 comprises over sixty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period and is designed to be accessible to non-specialists who have little previous familiarity with philosophy. As with the other volumes in the series, much of the emphasis of the essays is thematic, concentrating on developments during the period across a range of philosophical topics, from logic and metaphysics to political philosophy and philosophy of religion. Several chapters also discuss the changing relationship of philosophy to the natural and social sciences during this period. The result is an authoritative survey of this rich and varied period of philosophical activity, which will be of critical importance not only to teachers and students of philosophy but also to scholars in neighbouring disciplines such as the history of science, the history of ideas, theology and the social sciences.
The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870–1945 comprises over sixty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period and is designed to be accessible to non-specialists who have little previous familiarity with philosophy. As with the other volumes in the series, much of the emphasis of the essays is thematic, concentrating on developments during the period across a range of philosophical topics, from logic and metaphysics to political philosophy and philosophy of religion. Several chapters also discuss the changing relationship of philosophy to the natural and social sciences during this period. The result is an authoritative survey of this rich and varied period of philosophical activity, which will be of critical importance not only to teachers and students of philosophy but also to scholars in neighbouring disciplines such as the history of science, the history of ideas, theology and the social sciences.
Natural philosophy encompassed all natural phenomena of the physical world. It sought to discover the physical causes of all natural effects and was little concerned with mathematics. By contrast, the exact mathematical sciences were narrowly confined to various computations that did not involve physical causes, functioning totally independently of natural philosophy. Although this began slowly to change in the late Middle Ages, a much more thoroughgoing union of natural philosophy and mathematics occurred in the seventeenth century and thereby made the Scientific Revolution possible. The title of Isaac Newton's great work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, perfectly reflects the new relationship. Natural philosophy became the 'Great Mother of the Sciences', which by the nineteenth century had nourished the manifold chemical, physical, and biological sciences to maturity, thus enabling them to leave the 'Great Mother' and emerge as the multiplicity of independent scien
Gerhard Müller (1705–1783) is renowned as the first historian to specialise in the history and culture of Siberia. Born in Westphalia, Müller was invited to teach at the newly founded Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1725. He joined the Second Kamtchatka Expedition to western Siberia in 1735, and on his return spent the remainder of his life publishing works on the history of Siberia. His co-author Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811) also served on several expeditions to Siberia. This volume, first published in English in 1842, contains the English translation of these authors' detailed description of the Russian colonisation of Siberia and tensions with China. Combining ethnographic material with accounts of Russia's trade with indigenous Siberian peoples and China, this volume presented one of the first scholarly accounts of Siberia to western Europe at a time when the region was little known outside of Russia.
In this important and innovative study, Jon Klancher shows how the Romantic age produced a new discourse of the 'Arts and Sciences' by reconfiguring the Enlightenment's idea of knowledge and by creating new kinds of cultural institutions with unprecedented public impact. He investigates the work of poets, lecturers, moral philosophers, scientists and literary critics - including Coleridge, Godwin, Bentham, Davy, Wordsworth, Robinson, Shelley and Hunt - and traces their response to book collectors and bibliographers, art-and-science administrators, painters, engravers, natural philosophers, radical journalists, editors and reviewers. Taking a historical and cross-disciplinary approach, he opens up Romantic literary and critical writing to transformations in the history of science, history of the book, art history, and the little-known history of arts-and-sciences administration that linked early-modern projects to nineteenth- and twentieth-century modes of organizing 'knowledges'. His c
In this important and innovative study, Jon Klancher shows how the Romantic age produced a new discourse of the 'Arts and Sciences' by reconfiguring the Enlightenment's idea of knowledge and by creating new kinds of cultural institutions with unprecedented public impact. He investigates the work of poets, lecturers, moral philosophers, scientists and literary critics - including Coleridge, Godwin, Bentham, Davy, Wordsworth, Robinson, Shelley and Hunt - and traces their response to book collectors and bibliographers, art-and-science administrators, painters, engravers, natural philosophers, radical journalists, editors and reviewers. Taking a historical and cross-disciplinary approach, he opens up Romantic literary and critical writing to transformations in the history of science, history of the book, art history, and the little-known history of arts-and-sciences administration that linked early-modern projects to nineteenth- and twentieth-century modes of organizing 'knowledges'. His c
Why should mathematics, the purest of sciences, have a history? Medieval mathematicians took little interest in the history of their discipline. Yet in the Renaissance the history of mathematics flo
Funny and counter-intuitive, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal reveals how human intelligence may actually be more of a liability than a gift, and how the animal kingdom, in all its diversity, gets by just fine without it.At first glance, human history is full of remarkable feats of intelligence. We invented writing. Produced incredible achievements in music, the arts, and the sciences. We’ve built sprawling cities and traveled across oceans―and space―and expanded to every part of the globe. Yet, human exceptionalism can be a double-edged sword. With our unique cognitive prowess comes severe consequences, including existential angst, violence, discrimination, and the creation of a world teetering towards climate catastrophe. Understood side-by-side, human exceptionalism begins to look more like a curse. As scientist Justin Gregg persuasively argues, there’s an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn’t more prevalent in the animal kingdom. Simply put, non-human animals don’t need it
The literature on snakes is voluminous but overwhelmingly centered in the natural sciences, with little published about them in the fields of popular culture or the history of medicine. Focusing prima
Mounting failures of replication in social and biological sciences give a new urgency to critically appraising proposed reforms. This book pulls back the cover on disagreements between experts charged with restoring integrity to science. It denies two pervasive views of the role of probability in inference: to assign degrees of belief, and to control error rates in a long run. If statistical consumers are unaware of assumptions behind rival evidence reforms, they can't scrutinize the consequences that affect them (in personalized medicine, psychology, etc.). The book sets sail with a simple tool: if little has been done to rule out flaws in inferring a claim, then it has not passed a severe test. Many methods advocated by data experts do not stand up to severe scrutiny and are in tension with successful strategies for blocking or accounting for cherry picking and selective reporting. Through a series of excursions and exhibits, the philosophy and history of inductive inference come ali
Mounting failures of replication in social and biological sciences give a new urgency to critically appraising proposed reforms. This book pulls back the cover on disagreements between experts charged with restoring integrity to science. It denies two pervasive views of the role of probability in inference: to assign degrees of belief, and to control error rates in a long run. If statistical consumers are unaware of assumptions behind rival evidence reforms, they can't scrutinize the consequences that affect them (in personalized medicine, psychology, etc.). The book sets sail with a simple tool: if little has been done to rule out flaws in inferring a claim, then it has not passed a severe test. Many methods advocated by data experts do not stand up to severe scrutiny and are in tension with successful strategies for blocking or accounting for cherry picking and selective reporting. Through a series of excursions and exhibits, the philosophy and history of inductive inference come ali
